


These Are the Eyes and the Lives of the Taken

by rebelwriter6561



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Horror, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dream Sharing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period, depictions of trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:02:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23971264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelwriter6561/pseuds/rebelwriter6561
Summary: Jon has a visitor to his nightmares.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 9
Kudos: 164





	These Are the Eyes and the Lives of the Taken

**Author's Note:**

> [This post](https://blasphemous-lies-and-deceit.tumblr.com/post/615070006215081984/poshlosts-some-great-feedback-from-lily) came across my dash just as I was sinking deep into the Archives so it felt very fitting to write about

The woman was Buried, trapped, desperate and screaming. There was no hand around her ankle, yet, but she knew it was there and knew it was coming and that made it worse, the terror lodged in her chest, squeezing tight, clawing as hard as she was to get out. Fighting to escape, knowing there was no way to escape‒ 

'Yes, there was.' The thought dropped into Martin's brain the way things do in a dream. That's what it was, a dream, because in the real world she had been rescued and given her statement and was now reliving it, over and over, in her dreams. Except there was no way out in this. Because it was a nightmare.

'I have to help,' Martin thought. He wondered if he could. This wasn't his dream. He wasn't some passive observer. He could try.

He knelt in the rubble, hands reaching out for her, but stopped. His right hand was as free as it always was. 

His left was being held.

The hand holding his was as dark as a shadow, but he could make out the details of scars he wanted to know so well. The fingers were twined in his, palm to palm, so tight he couldn’t shake his hand free if he wanted to. There were eyes, over his skin, not buried within, green and illuminating, focused on the woman still trying desperately to free herself. 

Martin knew the hand. It was the same one that dragged him from the Lonely, the one he had held the entire drive up to Scotland. The one he had found again after they laid out the mattress and blankets and collapsed on them, that hand reaching across the short expanse to take his, like the thought of being separate was too much. 

Jon's hand. 

This was Jon's dreams as much as it was the woman's, because it was Jon that was reliving her terror and drinking it in. And now Martin was there too. 

Hesitantly, his eyes followed the line of Jon's arm up. The rest of him was cloaked in shadow, covered in green glowing eyes, but he could make out the details. The t-shirt and boxers he had fallen asleep in. His hair, down and loose, no sign of the grey amidst the dark. And his eyes, his real ones, watching him sadly beneath the brightest glowing pair. 

And over it all, watching them…the Eye stared down, unblinking, unflinching, unyielding. Martin could feel the pressure of its attention on him. Was this new? Had no one ever accompanied the Archivist into their dreams before? How could he be so lucky? 

Martin swallowed. He didn't know, anymore, where he stood as a piece in this game. His job and his…whatever with Jon tied him to the Beholding, but after so deep and recent a dive into the Lonely…the attachment felt frayed. And besides that…he seemed to be the only one here with free will, and he was going to abuse the hell out of that for as long as he could.

He pulled his attention back down to the Buried woman. "Stop it," he told her. "Stop panicking. You're not stuck."

She blinked at him, pulled from her terror, and the clinging weight holding her down dissipated without her focus. "I'm not?" she asked.

"You're not," he parroted back, because it was true at this point. "In fact you really have to get a move on, those giraffes are stealing your golf carts." And it was true, the way that dreams dragged you along to each thought and the narrative made sense, because she scrambled to her feet and chased after the thieving giraffes. 

Martin barely had a moment to celebrate his victory before he was being pulled to his feet. The shadow of Jon still held his hand, even if he didn't seem to be aware of it, and Martin trailed along beside him as they crossed beneath the Eye. Martin tried not to let the crawling feeling of being watched bother him. It wasn't like he wasn't used to it in the waking world, but here it was far more intense. He was being Seen, and now he really understood the fear.

A door opened in the building they approached out of nowhere. Martin held his breath as he was brought inside, but this one he knew. This one was no surprise. 

The hearts resting in their metal pans pulsing and pumping blood unnaturally, and queasiness pulled at Martin's stomach. But that's all it was, a discomforting feeling. There was nothing to be afraid of here.

The man huddled in the corner didn't seem to think so. He was paralyzed at the sight, frozen with fear as the blood dripped off the tables and slowly seeped towards him. Jon may have to stand there and soak it up, but Martin was already fed up. "Look, this is B-grade gore at best," he snapped, distracting the professor. Without his gaze on them, the hearts stopped thrashing on the table. "I've seen worse in mainstream horror. You could do better." 

The professor seemed surprised by this, but before he could say anything Martin gave him a quick shove through the blackboard, which made him stumble into another classroom full of perfectly normal students in clown costumes. "You want horrifying? Try teaching a literary thesis class."

"But I don't know anything‒" he mumbled, before the students began pelting him with questions about Shakespeare. 

"No, you really don't," Martin agreed as he was pulled from the room by Jon. They passed through into the previous room, and the hearts were gone. "I'm right, you know," Martin pointed out to his silent guide. "You said it yourself, he didn't even notice one of his students was called John Doe. Not really much to be scared of there."

Whether Jon or, by extension, the Eye agreed with him or not, he was pulled unerringly onwards, under the watchful Eye. Martin wondered, dimly, how long this would last. He knew Jon had a wealth of statements in his head, but few from statement-givers were still living and could still dream. What if Martin foiled enough that he ran out of terror to feast on? 

As they walked the edges of the world around them grew faded, and the Eye in the sky was covered, even though it was still there. Oh. _Oh._ Martin shivered, wished the hand in his would squeeze comfortingly. This wasn't the real Lonely. This wasn't even his Lonely. This was a cemetery, with jutting monuments like teeth, and a woman, alone and scared and Lost.

"Think about Evan," Martin told her. Her head whipped around, hearing but not seeing him. "Think about how much he meant to you. What you would do if he were here."

"Evan," she whispered, and that must be him, walking out of the fog with a smile. He had the Lukas look, but with real kindness underneath. Martin watched them walk away, and wondered if the hand holding his could feel the squeeze he gave it.

The scene shifted abruptly, not the gentle transition from before. Martin froze, staring around in sudden shock. This was his flat. His kitchen. His door.

There was a knock at the door.

Terror lodged itself in his spine, so intense he nearly fell to his knees. She was at the door, and the worms were already squirming in. He couldn’t react, he couldn’t even stem the tide, he scrambled for the cheap kitchen table, wanting to be up, off the floor. But Jon was immovable.

“Jon, come on, please!” Martin begged, pulling uselessly at his arm. He didn’t even budge, didn’t give any reaction that he was in danger and Martin was too. The worms were getting closer and Martin couldn't…he couldn't let him go. Couldn't leave him to the worms.

Outside the window, the Eye watched.

~*~

Reality smacked into realization like a car crash. Gasping, Martin only had a second to blink up at the ceiling before his view was obstructed. Jon's hands grabbed him and he was roughly pulled up, pressed to his collar, being held there with a surprisingly strong grip, as Jon buried his face in his hair, gasping words he couldn't make out.

Martin blinked slowly, trying to make sense of…everything. He'd felt awake before, awake and terrified, and now…now he was really awake and the terror was fading but that left room for the worry and concern to sleep in. The same mix of emotions he'd felt when he'd learned about Jon's dreams. The full scale of what was happening. And now he had a better idea of all that entailed.

Jon was sweating, almost feverish, and their hands were still clasped together. The other had a grip in Martin's shirt, so tight he was straining the fabric. Martin brought his free hand up to test against Jon's back, supporting his crouched form. The pitch of Jon's quiet words shifted, although he still couldn't make them out. The trembling in his arms, and the desperate sound in his voice, made it clear enough.

For all the terror he had witnessed, his own and others, Martin felt oddly calm in Jon's embrace. He'd faced the worst already, hadn't he? They were dreams, terrible and awful but they weren't his. He didn't feel them. And when the worst had come he had still had Jon.

Jon's quiet words finally cut off with an abrupt gasp. Martin waited, listening to him breathe, each lungful slowly calming. His grip didn't loosen.

"The Eye," he finally strangled out, " _really_ didn't like that."

"Oh." Martin couldn't think of what to say. "Are you…alright?"

"Am I‒" Jon jerked like he would pull away to look at his face, but instead stayed where he was, arms tightening minutely. "I'm not the one who was forcibly pulled into those nightmares."

"Well…you kinda are," Martin pointed out. Jon sighed.

"I'm well used to _that_ , at this point," he said, bitterly. "I hate that I'm used to it but…dreaming the same thing night after night, horrifying that it is... I'm certainly not _happy_ about it, but…" He sighed. "I wish you hadn't seen that."

"It's okay," Martin soothed, even though nothing was remotely close to being okay. The dream situation, at least. He was still so close to Jon, but he wouldn't dream about pulling away. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so close to someone else, and wasn't that a sad thought. But it was Jon, so real with his arms wrapped around him, the solidness that broke through the fog of the Lonely. 

He couldn't think of anything that could feel more right.

“I don’t know how that happened.” How much did it cost for Jon to admit that? “I’ve never had company before. And you could change things.” His voice was soft with wonder. “You pulled them out of it, and they feel...it feels different now. Part of me wonders if you drove me from their dreams for good, that I won't experience that again." He laughed, weakly. "I think I'd be okay with that."

"And the Beholding?"

Jon became very quiet. Martin could feel his breaths stirring his hair. Had he been right to distract the dreamers? Had he done the right thing, starving Jon through his dreams?  
But he remembered Elias's statement, that the people in the dreams re-lived it every night as well, and pushed it from his mind. 

“It didn’t… It _reacted_ , I’ve _never_ felt that before. I know that’s why we went to the Lonely dream, why we were in your apartment again‒” he shuddered. “That was punishment. For meddling.”

Martin's throat dried up. "Is there…any‒" Jon was shaking his head before he could finish his words.

"No. You're not in danger, no." Was that what had been happening? Jon saying the words into existence, hoping that his powers would make them statements of fact? "The Eye…it Sees but doesn't always Understand. I…convinced it? I‒" he cut off with a shaky laugh, pressing his face deeper into the crown of his head. "I'm a bit of a learning experience for it, I believe."

"How so?" Jon shifted, rolling off of him, and Martin mourned the loss before he realized Jon still had his hand, and hadn't actually gone far. Was closer, in fact. Where before they had gone to sleep merely holding hands, now they were nearly chest-to-chest, breaths mingling, and the firm line of Jon's leg hooked around his. It should be uncomfortable, a rapid jump over the line neither had even acknowledged, but it felt right. Never wrong.

"The Eye," Jon blinked, slightly cross eyed trying to stare at his face. "It Sees people, their actions and fears and everything but…doesn't _feel_ the way we do. Emotions are foreign to it. And those who worship it aren't exactly clinging to their humanity and their…positive emotions." His voice sounded so broken that Martin slid his hand up to his cheek, letting it linger there as Jon pressed into it.

"It's never felt love like this." Jon's words squeezed around his heart, catching in his throat. "Through me, Its experiencing something It's only observed, at a distance, never touched." His face twisted, briefly. "We have that in common, I think."

"Jon." At his words Jon's eyes flicked back up to his. "Don't say that."

Jon sniffed, rubbing his cheek into Martin's palm like a cat. "It’s true,” he mumbled. “Never felt this strongly before."

"Ever?" Martin didn't know who he was asking about, but Jon turned his head, pressing a gentle kiss into his palm.

"Not like this," he murmured. 

Warmth bloomed through his chest. It wasn't perfect, nothing could be about anything in their lives, but hearing that, seeing the look in Jon's eyes…it was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> My first TMA fic. Probably not the last.


End file.
